Microsoft salutes fanboys

Microsoft has thrown a lifeline to the Office 2004 for Mac by extending its official retirement date.

The software vendor was expected to end mainstream support today, but Microsoft’s controversial decision to clip the wings of Office 2008’s support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) clearly proved to be a bad bit of game play by MS.

More Reading

Microsoft admitted that many diehard Mac fans simply stuck with Office 2004 in order to continue to get their VBA support.

Of course, in the past year, some may have altogether dropped Microsoft's proprietary Office suite in favour of the free and excellent rival OpenOffice.org.

The vendor confirmed the Office 2004 for Mac reprieve in a tail-between-legs post yesterday on the company’s Mac Mojo blog.

“The date has been extended to 2012 specifically to ensure continuous cross-platform compatibility for Office 2004 customers reliant on VBA until support for VBA is released in the next version of Office for Mac,” said the firm’s wonk Mike Tedesco.

“This extension does not change the five-year support policy for other Office for Mac products, including future versions. Nor does it affect any other Microsoft products, including Office on the Windows platform.

"With the additional support, we will continue delivering all the types of support associated with Mainstream Support, including security updates and non-security bug fixes.”

Office 2010, which is expected to ship in the second half of next year, will see the return of VBA support, said Microsoft. ®